Meredith & the BP battle

Cla Meredith has
quietly been putting together a great spring, as the right-hander hasn’t
allowed a hit in five scoreless innings of relief. Meredith has appeared in six
games and is one of the candidates for a right-handed relief role in the
Orioles bullpen.

“There’s some dogfights going on down there in the bullpen,” manager Dave
Trembley said. “They know it and they’re pitching like they know it.”

Meredith tossed a scoreless again on Wednesday and, along
with Matt Albers, should be considered as a front-runner to make the O’s ‘pen.
Albers hasn’t yielded a run in 6 1/3 innings spread over five games.

With closer Mike
Gonzalez, setup man Jim Johnson,
Koji Uehara and Mark Hendrickson
locks to make the team the three remaining spots will likely be a situational
lefty and two right-handed relief roles. Kam
Mickolio figures to be in the mix for one of those, with Trembley raving
earlier in the spring about a spot in the pen being Mickolio’s to lose.

However, he hasn’t been overly impressive this spring, allowing
two runs in six innings over five games. He’s given up five hits and walked
four with four strikeouts. Three of those walks came in Wednesday’s game as
Mickolio labored in some long counts, yielding a run over two innings.

“Mickolio had good stuff but ran his pitch count up, ” Trembley
said. “I would have liked to see him put hitters away a little earlier.”

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